<< Democratic planning has been defended at length and defended against
Hayekianism by Robin Hahnel and Pat Devine amongst others. As for market
socialism, no thank you. If given the choice between MS and democratic
or even central planning, no working class person
would choose to live in MS even *if* it can allocate consumer goods more
efficiently. People who are alienated by and driven to
despair by labor markets are not going to trumpet the supposed virtues
of them. Class struggle will continue in MS, between the workers and the
managerial class. What then? All markets are evil and need to be
abolished. IMO, market socialism is part of the 1990's retreat of the
left in the face of defeats in various locations. >> * * *
Who was it said of the Bourbons that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing?
The workers are the mangerial class in MS: they arrange their enterprises along democratic lines as they see fit. Who said anything about labor markets? In Schweickart's model, a right to a place in a coop or a government job is a constitutional entitlement. If the objection is to non-uathorutative assignment of work, try and ask some workers what they think about a system tahtw ould tell them where they had to work and what to do. With the statement "all markets are evil and need to be abolished," it is impossible to argue. That is not materialist analysis but fundamentalist faith.
For what it is worth I have been a market socialist almost my entire life on the left, going back 20 years now. I was wooed by Alec Nove and won by the Yugoslavs, people like Branko Horvat and Jaroslav Vanek; I like to cite Hayek to irritate the faithful, but in fact Hayek was right about central planning. In any case it was not "defeats" that made me see the logic of the position, but successes, notably in the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain and the former Yugoslavia. Of course the economic failure of the old USSR--evident to everyone by the mid-1970s--was a factor, but I do not consider thata defeat for socialism, since the USSR was socialist only in name. The defeat of socialism in the FSU took place long before--sometime between 1918 and 1929, it was a process. The best time for socialism in the FSU was during the NEP, wihen there were relatively free markets.--jks